Ladygunn Magazine
Ladygunn Magazine is an American magazine dedicated to writing about the arts, such as music and fashion. Melanie Martinez has done two interviews and one photo shoot with them. Interview #1 Melanie Martinez is a playful one, in the most literal sense of the word. At times it feels like the 20-year-old singer, who dropped her debut record Cry Baby in August, is the embodiment of the vintage dolls you’ve been obsessing over on Pinterest. So it’s a no-brainer when we select the Family Arcade in Los Angeles as a backdrop for Melanie’s photo-shoot. “I absolutely love arcade games,” she tells me over the phone. Instead, it’s the real-life scheming and tabloid worshiping she has no interest in. We chat on the same day the whole VMA battle between Nicki Minaj and Taylor Swift erupts on Twitter, so naturally I ask Melanie about her opinion on the #trendingtopic. “To be completely honest with you, I hardly know what you’re talking about. I don’t really care about any of that, unless my friends literally show it to me in front of my face,” she says. “So I’ll just say that I think everybody should be friends and there shouldn’t be any fights!” For a person who doesn’t follow pop culture much, she surely has been backed up by not one, but two pop entities of seismic proportions: First, on the third season of The Voice in 2012 (she was part of Team Adam and left Week 5), and then when her accordion-heavy song “Carousel” was used in the trailer for FX’s American Horror Story: Freakshow last fall. But as she’ll tell you, singing competitions are hardly her thing. “I just did it because I was 16. I wrote songs in my bathroom in Long Island and wanted to get out there, but didn’t know any other way. As I was the youngest on the show, I learned a lot from the other contestants.” Horror hits closer to home though. When asked about what character in any movie she’d like to become, Melanie has to take a minute to think before stating the obvious: “I would definitely be in a horror movie or a Tim Burton movie. It has to be creepy.” Turning creepy into cute seems to be one of her biggest skills. Everything about Melanie—from her gothic Disney princess looks to her Margaret Keane-esque take on indie pop —adds vibrant layers to her dark pop identity. Even her striking black-and-white hair is a self-described act of rebellion. “My mom never let me bleach my hair so I told her I’m gonna go all Cruella De Vil when I was 16, but she did not believe me. When I came home from the salon, she freaked out and didn’t talk to me for a week.” The artist is equally headstrong about her artistic vision and adventurous in the studio, sampling soap bubbles on one of the album’s standouts, “Soap,” and using enough toy sounds to make her record the perfect soundtrack for a late-night Toys R Us hangout. “The story of the album is basically the story of my life in a little bit more twisted way,” she explains. “If I just made an album about everything being mature, it would be like any other dark album. So mine has all the frosting and sprinkles, but also has this dark chocolate core.” She also wants her album to have a lasting aftertaste: “I definitely want to put out a music video for every song. Even it takes two years I’m gonna save up and go broke to make sure that I have videos for all the songs that I like,” she adds. “My album is a concept record about this little girl, Cry Baby. But my artist life and my personal life are pretty much the same: I always act and dress the same way,” Melanie reveals, noting the 50s, Peter Pan, and Japanese fashion as influences and picking Neutral Milk Hotel’s In The Aeroplane Over The Sea as her ultimate growing-up record. But does she actually cry a lot? “Last time I cried was two days ago. I was writing a hook for a hip-hop song and got really frustrated. Then my friend said some things that made me re-think everything I was writing. And I just gave up and started crying,” she laughs. Even if the said song doesn’t work out, by now she has enough material to please her fans, which have started calling themselves “cry babies,” naturally. “I try to stay away from calling my fans anything. I look at everyone as an individual person, so I don’t want to categorize them. They’re all unique and they all have names,” she insists. So, here comes the challenge—can she give a shout-out to her most devoted cry babies? Yes, she can: “Brian, Courtney, Becky, Evy, Nava!” Who knows, maybe by the time her fans have kids on their own one day, they’ll be tucking them into bed to the sounds of a Melanie Martinez lullaby record. “I feel like my debut album is kinda on the edge of being a dark lullaby record, but a straight lullaby album would be very cool too,” she agrees. Well, the world’s your playground, Melanie. Interview #2 Melanie Martinez wears baby doll dresses, multi-colored tresses, and radiates a red hot aura which, according to Mood by Moss, means she’s engaged in life, driven to express ideas, and is socially charismatic. It only took a few minutes of chatting with the uncommon pop star to confirm that all of these things were true. Despite her youthful impression, Martinez is wise beyond her years when it comes to creating the world after her own unique vision. She has an obsessive fan base, a certified gold album, and no intention of slowing down or wiping away her tears. I sat down with Melanie during the second weekend of Austin City Limits Music Festival, post her aura reading and pre her festival performance, to ask her about her tour, creative process, and embracing the moniker of “cry baby”. How has the last leg of your Cry Baby tour been going? It’s been going good. I’ve been touring for a long time, especially these songs. I feel like any artist over time you can get kind of, not bored, but you want to play new music. I’ve been writing my next record and I’m really excited to put that out next year. I’m just dying to play new music. Speaking of the tour, if you had to choose between the smaller venues you’ve been playing and festival shows like today, which type is your favorite? What I like about festivals is they are really chill, you’re playing and then it’s over by 6pm if you’re on early enough. When you’re at a venue all day it’s feels like it’s been a long day and you’re not done until 1am in reality. I like the feel of festivals, the unity that everyone has, it’s really nice and fun. But I do love playing my own shows just because my fans are so incredible and creative and inspiring to me. They’re just really awesome and it’s always so much fun. You mentioned that you’ve always been emotional, sensitive and kind of a ‘cry baby’, but that you’ve embodied that and let that create your art. How does that feel to let go of the idea that you shouldn’t be that way by embracing that sensitivity? It feels good. I’m still growing. Every day I’m still learning more about myself. I still cry every single day of my life, I’m very emotional. That’s something I’m always going to be. Writing music and creating, making music videos, painting, anything that is making something from nothing I think that helps me express how I feel and get all of my negative feelings that I have out. It’s like therapy almost. I think music has definitely helped me grow and learn about myself. Speaking of channeling creativity, I heard that your music was inspired by vintage toy sounds and you mentioned your love for painting, what else inspires you to create music? I think that I just always had this love for creating ever since I was younger. My parents were super strict. I wasn’t really allowed out of the house a lot, and I didn’t really have any friends so I never got invited anywhere, it wasn’t like I had fear of missing out or anything like that. I would just stay at home and write and teach myself how to play guitar and paint. I was really into photography which is what sparked me wanting to direct my own videos and being super into every little detail and kind of meticulous about that kind of thing. That’s why I love the visuals and why the visuals are so important to the music for me. That brings me to my next question, how do the visuals play into your artistic vision? Your aesthetic and stage setup is very immersive, do you think that’s an important aspect for your fans? I think that what I wanted to do with Cry Baby was, I wanted to create this character Cry Baby, but I also wanted it to be like she’s me. I feel very connected to the character and with that I feel very invested in making sure that all of the little details are perfect and that her story matches up with everything that I do. My own apartment is literally pastels with vintage toys everywhere, it’s just who I am. So my stage set up is like an extension. Also, with the stage set up specifically, I wanted people to feel like they’re in Cry Baby’s nursery, in her room. Many of your songs have child like themes obviously juxtaposed with what you’re experiencing on a day to day basis. Is that something that you are doing intentionally or does that happen naturally? It just happens naturally. Whenever I’m feeling any negative emotion or even positive emotion, mainly when I’m sad or mad it’s easier to write. I think that it just naturally happens with whatever I’m thinking about. I start with titles first, I’m very visual in that way, where I will start with the title. And when I’m actually writing music for it and writing lyrics, I’m trying to tell a story that’s either actually happened in my life, especially in the second album. There’s a lot of songs about how I feel when I’m on tour or what it feels like to have so many people watching me but it’s disguised in themes. Do you like to disguise it? Do you feel safer? I feel safer. I feel like having Cry Baby as the character I’m talking about, it helps me because I am self-conscious of people hearing about my personal life. I never post that much about my personal life and I never talk about my personal life. I like to keep it about the music and the art, because I think it’s important. Especially now when people care more about what celebrities look like and their relationships become more important than their music. I never want that to be the case with my art or my music. So it is obviously scary putting my personal life into my music because that’s what people are listening to, but I know my fans definitely want to know how I feel as well, and that’s something I’m learning to be able to share. It’s really hard though. You mentioned writing and the next album, what else are you excited about coming next? I’m really excited to finish these music videos, I just finished shooting “Pacify Her” and “Mrs. Potato Head”, and I have to go back and edit, actually tomorrow morning I leave to go home so that I have a week to edit those videos, and a couple other surprises I can’t talk about yet but I’m super excited. Photo Shoot 10914629 716369675173269 873210958 n.jpg LADYGUNN-Melanie_Ladygunn-17.jpg LADYGUNN-Melanie_Ladygunn-21.jpg LADYGUNN-Melanie_Ladygunn-9.jpg LADYGUNN-Melanie_Ladygunn-11.jpg Gallery Melanie_martinez_2_lo_res.jpg Melanie_martinez_1_lo_res.jpg Category:Magazines Category:Interviews Category:Photo Shoots Category:2015 Category:2016